Reviews

Haemic: Fields of sanguine

16/05/12 || BamaHammer

Regardless of how you feel about the legitimacy of drums and programming in your metal, there’s no denying that when they are done right, they can actually bring a bevy of new and interesting elements to a song and sound amazing. When they’re done poorly, however, they can make an entire album sound a little hokey. Haemic’s “Fields of sanguine” restlessly sits somewhere near the former end of that spectrum, holding a promising future for such an interesting band/project.

First of all, Haemic is international symphonic black metal created with computerized drums and instrumentation, which seems like something that would interest me, and for the most part, it does. The members, hailing from Hungary, the United States, and Taiwan, have never even actually met each other in person. They’ve managed to work through the wonders of the interwebs to create an entire album collaboratively by swapping tracks electronically, editing and adding parts and sending them back. Really cool.

The vocals are reminiscent of a somewhat poorly produced Angela Gossow, which I’m not sure is a compliment to Mitchell Shinderman’s ability or an insult to his manhood. Either way, they work for the most part. They do, however, simply sound bad from a production standpoint. I understand that overly glossy productions don’t really do any favors to this particular type of music, but they sound like they were done with the absolute cheapest bedroom miking techniques available. In comparison with the other sounds and instruments, it just clashes uglily (It’s a word. Fuck you.).

The orchestration is absolutely stunning. Electronic programming usually fails to elicit any type of emotional response from me, but for some reason, Haemic does a fantastic job of sounding genuinely inspired in the programming department. Songs seem to move and breathe, creating a sensation of uneasy, sinister evil at times and pure unbridled excitement at others. They use a bevy of instrument samples and have an obvious understanding of arranging and composing. The result is an excellent, high quality experience in metal orchestration.

If you like the whole symphonic black metal motif, just understand that Haemic is a band that does it better than most in practice. It may not sound as pristine as Dimmu Borgir, but in terms of technical musicianship, a band like that can’t hold a candle to Haemic. “Fields of sanguine” is obviously the result of many years of dedication and hard work both in learning and perfecting their musicianship and in writing and producing such a unique musical odyssey. Check it out.